There's nothing more frustrating than wasting time. When you're ready and raring to go (as you probably are every day at work) sitting through Word's opening splash screen isn't the best use of your time. After all, it's pretty likely you remember what word-processing application you're using - you don't need to be reminded.

Fortunately, if you're using Word 2000 and you've installed the Microsoft Office 2000 SR-1/SR-1a update, you can speed things up by creating a new Word shortcut and then disabling the splash screen.

To begin, right-click on your desktop and then choose New | Shortcut from the resulting shortcut menu. In the Create Shortcut dialog box, click the Browse button and locate and select Word's program file, Winword.exe, and then click Open. Windows adds the pathname to the Command Line text box in the Create Shortcut dialog box.

Next, add a space, followed by the /q switch at the end of the pathname. This switch disables Word's splash screen when Word is launched via the new shortcut. For example, the contents of our Command Line text box look like this:

Click Next to continue. Specify a name for the shortcut, and then click Finish. To launch Word without displaying its splash screen, double-click on your new shortcut. If you wish, you can move or copy the shortcut to a more convenient location. Note: For more information about the Microsoft Office 2000 SR-1/SR-1a update, visit the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

Created Date: 12/07/2001  Last Reviewed: 12/07/2001  Rev. Date: